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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25514164">forgiveness is a lesson he cursed you to learn</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl'>TolkienGirl</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [276]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Fingolfin is a gem of a dad but he doesn't know it, Fingon comes to a decision, Fingon the Valiant, Gen, Mithrim, The Great Wall of Turgon, Title from a Sleeping At Last Song, because Feanor formed his core beliefs in childhood, parenting, set during chapter 5 of someone who no longer is</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 06:09:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,279</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25514164</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>All his sons were born better than Fingolfin will ever be; born braver, whether they knew it or not.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Anairë/Fingolfin | Ñolofinwë, Fingolfin | Ñolofinwë &amp; Fingon | Findekáno, Fingolfin | Ñolofinwë &amp; Turgon of Gondolin, Fëanor | Curufinwë &amp; Fingolfin | Ñolofinwë</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [276]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>forgiveness is a lesson he cursed you to learn</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>All of Fingolfin’s sons have—or had—their own particular silence. Fingon’s silence is resolve, Turgon’s is concentration, Argon’s <em>was</em> contentment.</p><p>All his sons were born better than Fingolfin will ever be; born braver, whether they knew it or not. His sons lived and wept and quarreled and kept still better than Fingolfin could have done, in their joys and sorrows both.</p><p>What he feels, reflecting on them and their steady-shining souls, is not pride—though he sometimes calls it so. It is devotion, for he has no greater right. Not when his baby is dead and gone above a year. No greater right, for the man who forced untold anguish on his wife’s final months. Anaire foundered in the bitter wilderness, aching for that first loss.</p><p>Fingolfin’s silence is regret.</p><p>He clears his throat of the grief gathering there. None of this, no doleful reverie, shall lift the unearthed stones needed for Turgon’s wall.</p><p>Turgon was waiting for him, up the hill, but as Fingolfin labors under the weight of a boulder the size of a man’s head, his son descends.</p><p>“Father! Don’t strain your back.”</p><p>Fingolfin hands over the stone. Turgon’s face twitches into a grin.</p><p>“You want to defend yourself,” he says. “To say you are not yet old.”</p><p>“I want to say that,” Fingolfin agrees. “But it would be a lie.”</p><p>They climb the hill again together.</p><p>“Stone and wood both,” Turgon says. “We can’t all build our barricades of steel. Wonder where he got all that for the bridge, eh? Must have made the whole lot of ‘em melt down their pots and pans and trinkets.”</p><p>“Perhaps there was a mine, nearby. Parts of this land are rich in ore.”</p><p>“Whatever it was.” Turgon goes quiet again. They have reached his wall. Some of Mithrim’s men and women are helping, too. It heartens Fingolfin to see that.</p><p>He himself has not spent much time by Turgon’s side, these days. He and Fingon have left their remaining family to fend for themselves, in aid of Maedhros.</p><p>It is a bargain that Fingolfin believes <em>must</em> be struck at present. That makes him no less pained by it; pained by the inescapable knowledge that each moment he chooses for Maedhros is one moment less with the children chosen for him.</p><p>What <em>is</em> duty, to a man of so many regrets?</p><p>(Turgon left a child and a wife. He is as much a man as Fingon, in some ways more, through life’s hard press.)</p><p>“You are doing a great service here,” Fingolfin murmurs.</p><p>Turgon offers his brief thanks, little more than a grunt and a nod.</p><p>The gate of Mithrim, up above, clangs shut. Fingolfin turns towards the sound, shading his eyes against the slanting sun, and sees Fingon.</p><p>“Come to help with the wall?” Turgon calls dryly. At first Fingolfin fears that something is wrong, but Fingon’s pace is unhurried. If Maedhros—if there <em>was </em>aught amiss, Fingon would run.</p><p>Turgon is more sensible of other’s feelings than he is often given credit for. He would not have jested, Fingolfin thinks, if Fingon seemed to be in distress.</p><p>“The wall?” Fingon asks distractedly, as he approaches. His braids swing against his shoulders. Hair as dark as Anaire’s, untouched by grey. Fingolfin found his first silver threads quite young; they were more foreboding than Fingon’s gold.</p><p>It is difficult to imagine Fingon, growing old.</p><p>“The wall,” Turgon echoes, no trace of a grin now. “One that may save us all, if it comes to that.” He turns his back; sets another stone at its foundation.</p><p>Fingon’s brow furrows, but only for a moment. His eyes are on his father in an instant, trained and not so calm as his stride suggested.</p><p>“What is it?” Fingolfin asks, offering a silent apology to Turgon for abandoning his post.</p><p>Silent—doing, thus, no good.</p><p>“May I speak with you?” Fingon asks, as if he needs permission for such a thing.  </p><p> </p><p>Mithrim’s garden still flourishes, though it lacks summer’s bright shades and robust foliage. Attending to his eldest’s desire for distance from other ears, Fingolfin walks alongside rows of cabbage and carrot, his hands behind his back.</p><p>His shoulders ache, a little, but he has not done enough work today. There can never be—<em>enough</em>.</p><p>Fingon does not look at his father. He looks at the cabbages. Likely, he is trying to find his way from silence to declaration. Fingolfin marvels at that, at the private journey of Fingon’s mind, just as he did when Fingon spoke his first, long-awaited words after months of infant mystery.</p><p>“I cannot hide any longer,” Fingon says at last, facing south. “They must know. That is to say—I must tell them.” Now he looks at his father, and his face is rendered young because of how readily it crumples, because of the lines of pain that still write themselves there anew each time he suffers.</p><p>“Tell them?” Fingolfin asks.</p><p>(Fingolfin thinks he knows.)</p><p>Fingon nods. Fingon’s eyes are so blue, so eager to understand. To teach. “What I did to Maedhros was not a sin. It hurt me dreadfully—and if I’ve done any wrong, it is in saying first that it hurt <em>me</em> rather than him—but it was <em>necessary</em>.” He does not break for very long, does not allow his father to speak. He has too much that matters, which he must say first. “His hand could not be saved. I told you that before, and I didn’t lie. I chose him rather than a secret death; that was all that was before me, there.”</p><p>Fingolfin cannot save this son.</p><p>“Fingon,” he says. “You have my trust.”</p><p>“Yet you disagree.” The pain in Fingon’s voice—a string pulled taut—rasps against Fingolfin’s spirit.</p><p>“It isn’t that.” Past Fingon’s shoulder, he can see Turgon moving steadily from antlike distance, trudging up the hill with another stone in his grasp. Turgon will keep them safe; will build a world around them that, unlike every other world his father has known, shall outlast them.</p><p>Turgon’s wall will not collapse around their ears.</p><p>“Your cousins are uneasy,” Fingolfin admits. “And in truth, their unease worries me. Your actions were your own, Fingon. No one could begrudge you them, who knew your heart. Your circumstances.”</p><p>“My cousins…”</p><p>“You have answered to Maedhros. This matter does not, in principle, concern anyone else.”</p><p>“The <em>only</em> way,” Fingon says, trembling a little over that phrase, “To be free is to make a clean break. Whatever villains, whom we know not, began his maiming, I completed it. I must be different than them, for him.”</p><p>Fingolfin opens his mouth to protest the comparison, but Fingon raises—in irony—his hand.</p><p>“<em>I</em> know I am different. And it is because I know that I must reveal what it cost, to bring him back.” His stubbornness has risen high and hot since childhood; it will not set with a pale winter’s sun.</p><p>“You are already determined,” Fingolfin says. All his life—long before there was Fingon to test him and his heart—he has desired to be a counselor. To offer wisdom that <em>was</em> wisdom; to have such wisdom sought.</p><p>Fingon nods.</p><p>His children are not Feanor—are nothing like Feanor, save in how he aches in loving them. They do not always want his judgment, but they seek something else. Fingolfin is only too blockheaded to understand that.</p><p>He says, “But you asked to speak to me.”</p><p>“I am not—” Fingon chokes. “I am not brave.”</p><p><em>Too blockheaded</em>.</p><p>“You are valiant,” Fingolfin assures him, on firm ground at last. “Brave not once, but many times.”</p><p> </p><p>He embraces his son.</p><p>He lets him go.</p>
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